Hey Guys,

I'm getting a shimmy/shake in my steering wheel when driving 40-70mph. I've looked up quite a bit about the pitman/idler arm problems these trucks have but I'm not sure if that's what I'm experiencing. Can anyone help me? The torsion bars haven't been cranked, it has 265's on it and around 84k. I'm currently about 500 miles from home and I don't have anywhere to work on my truck. If the pitman/idler arms are going bad, does anyone have an idea of approx how much this will cost? Tomorrow I'm going to go pull the plastic skid plate off and take a look to see if I can see some play in the pitman/idler arms.

I appreciate any help I can get!

Thanks,
Dennis

You will have to jack up each side and grab the tire at 9 and 3, move it back and forth and see if you feel any free play, then grab the bottom of the tire and the top and see if there is any slop there. If its the last one then you either have wheel bearing or balljoints and if its the first one, it could be idler, pitman arm or the tie rods. I just did my 2 inner tie rods (85 a piece) and the drivers side wheel bearing. It cost 350 for the bearing and about 2 hours for me to install. It was so worn out that it was causing a vibration.

BTW, i did my idler arm last october and it cost me 200 bucks just for the arm! Then it took about 45 minutes to change.

Well, I finally got around to checking this out. I found a small amount of play in my pitman arm and nothing really in my idler arm. I couldn't feel any play in my ball joints/hubs when the truck was jacked up either. I figured I'd take the truck for a real quick drive around town to double-check the symptoms. At first it rode like normal but after about 3 miles, it started to get bad. When I got back from my 5-6 mile trip, my front passenger side wheel was so hot that I could barely touch it and I could smell grease cooking. Do I have a bad hub assembly or is something screwed up with my brakes? My truck wasn't pulling to the side or anything like that... which makes me believe that my brakes are just fine, but who knows. I have read up on replacing the hub assemblies on these trucks but I'm still not sure if I could do it... since I don't have anywhere to work on my truck and I can't work on it in the parking lot (I'm about 500 miles from home for another month). Let me know what you guys think.

Also, since I can see a very small amount of play in my pitman arm, would it be worth it for me to buy the Cognito pitman/idler support kit? I plan on having this truck for another 3 years or so and I don't beat on it very much...

sounds like upper ball joints to me, just had to replace both of mine for the same reason/symptoms.

If its hot enough that you can't touch it, i wouldn't be driving it until you get this sorted out. Did you lay into the brakes towards the end of your testdrive? I would say that the caliper may be hanging up alittle bit, either that or the caliper bolts are gunked up and won't let it move freely. Did you have the jack close to the balljoint on the passenger side? You get a more accurate feel for it when you do it this way. If you have no play in the passenger wheel at all, you probably don't have a bad bearing, hopefully its just the caliper. Try spinning the wheel when you have it up on the jack, then do the other side and see if one is harder to move.

BTW, it would be a nightmare trying to change a wheel bearing like these in a parking lot. Its time consuming even in a shop.